British Medical Journal

“ She was the first woman to be admitted to the British Medical Register, and her success is the more notable in that, apart from difficulties brought about by the total novelty of the idea of a woman studying medicine, she had to contend with one experienced by many male students, namely, lack of means. ”

“ Bright, Richard (1789-1858) , ii. 5; birth, 14; studies at Edinburgh and Guy’s, 15; journey through Iceland, 15; enters at Cambridge, 16; travels on Continent, 16, 17; at Waterloo, 16; appointments at Fever Hospital and at Guy’s, 17; Dr. Wilks on, 18; writes on kidney diseases, 18-20; on pneumonia, 20; on cerebral and spinal diseases, 21; practice, and death, 21; character, 22, 23; and Holland, 63, 64. Bristol Medical School, ii. 127. British Association, ii. 183. British Medical Association, i. 281, ii. 162, 177. British Medical Journal, ii. 154, 248, 265. Brodie, Alexander, i. ”

“ He returned to London by way of Paris, and in September 1778 was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians. In 1779 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In the following year he was chosen physician to the Westminster General Dispensary, and in 1781 physician to St. Luke's Hospital. In the same year he became editor of the ‘London Medical Journal,’ a new magazine, which was continued under the name of ‘Medical Facts and Observations’ until 1800. ”

“ In 1903 he was Vice-President of the Pathology Section at the meeting of the British Medical Association at Swansea. In his youth he was a fine athlete, and he rowed in the College eights and fours. He was a keen yachtsman and golfer, and loved a game of billiards. ”

“ To produce these efforts, and to excite this interest, nothing, perhaps, bids fairer than a Scientific Journal. Hitherto nearly all our exertions, of this kind, have been made by medical gentlemen, and directed primarily to medical objects. We are neither ignorant nor forgetful of the merits of our various Medical Journals, nor of the zeal with which, as far as consistent with their main object, they have fostered the physical sciences. ”

“ With him the first step in every case of disease is diagnosis, without which prescribing is simply drawing a bow at a venture, with small probability of penetrating a joint of the harness; and he insists that neither the apothecary nor the patient is qualified to make a diagnosis. The determination of the character of a disease is not a simple matter, often baffling the profoundest learning and the broadest experience, and, in most cases, requiring special knowledge and discriminating judgment. The most obtrusive symptoms are by no means necessarily the most characteristic ”

“ O'Sullivan was a man of the most lovable character: with simplicity he combined manly courage, as had frequently been displayed in his mountaineering adventures. He was one of the outstanding figures in the life of the College, and it is admitted by his colleagues that it will be hard to find a man to fill his place. ”

“ Alexander Charles O'Sullivan, Professor of Pathology in the University of Dublin and Senior Fellow of Trinity College, at his residence, Ailesbury Road, Dublin, after an illness of only a few days. He was born in the county of Cork about sixty-six years ago, the son of the Rev. Denis O'Sullivan, Rector of Macroom. From Tipperary Grammar School he went to Trinity College, Dublin, and having studied classics in his freshman years he suddenly turned to mathematics, and obtained a scholarship in that subject in 1879. ”

“ O'Sullivan was a fine classical scholar, and always kept in close touch with the progress of modern mathematics; many men holding chairs in that subject to-day would acknowledge him to be their master. His interest in the development of mathematical research did not interfere with his devotion to philosophy and the classics, and he probably had few equals in his knowledge of cellular pathology. He was an inspiring teacher; his laboratory was a rallying point for medical students and newly qualified physicians in search of advice and guidance. ”

“ That great and numerous obstacles," to use the language of a learned author, in an excellent article in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, " exist, to a general medical topography of this or any other country, we are most ready to admit; but, we have little hesitation in saying, hat the greatest of all is to be found in the apathy of the resident medical men;, from whose cordial co-operation alone any thing of the kind can be expected. Any voluminous work, whether systematic or empirical, must, unavoidably, contain much useless, and some erroneous, matter. ”

“ It was entitled A Journal of the Practice of Medicine and Surgery and Pharmacy in the Military Hospitals of France, consisting merely of translations from the French journals of military medicine. The first real American medical journal was the Medical Repository, begun in 1797 and discontinued in 1824.
The present century, now drawing to its close, saw in its earlier half the rise of a large number of American physicians and surgeons who have made their names illustrious for all time by their teachings, their writings, and their invention and originality. ”

“ There are two points never to be forgotten in speaking of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell: one is that, although much of her life was passed in America, she did not go to that country until she was 11 years old, and always regarded herself as English. ”

“ When she finally settled in England she continued to co-operate in the movement which has since led to the frank recognition of the medical profession as a proper sphere for women, and to the establishment, as we recently pointed out, of as many as 476 registered medical women in practice in England alone. ”

“ He had ample field for his energy in emergency operations of surgery, and obstetrics, and his services were much appreciated. Although, so far as I know, he never sent in a bill, his patients seldom forgot him at Christmastide, and on his leaving the district to take up his duties as professor of surgery in Galway they presented him with an address and a handsome monetary gift. When not engaged in professional work he was always to be found in his workshop, well fitted up with lathes and tools for fine work, many being of his own contrivance and design. ”

“ In 1859 she paid a further visit to England, during which she lectured on medicine as a profession for women. Among one of her audiences was Miss Garrett, now Mrs. Garrett-Anderson, who shortly afterwards began, in her turn, the study of medicine, qualifying as the first woman doctor of English education in 1865. Just before her return to America it was suggested to Miss Blackwell that she should get her name inscribed in the recently instituted Medical Register, and but for this almost accidental circumstance she might not have spent the last forty years of her existence in this country. ”

“ From this time, though he contributed occasional papers, lectures, and cases of value to the Dublin Journal of Medical Science, and to the medical societies, he published no book till 1854, when a valuable treatise [Pg 190] on Diseases of the Heart confirmed his reputation. In this he paid great attention to functional disturbances of the heart, where no organic disease was present. He says with great modesty, “the diagnosis of the combinations of diseases, even in so small an organ as the heart, is still to be worked out.... ”

“ Even to-day there are those of them who practise Eastern and Western medicine side by side. It would seem strange to a British surgeon to learn that it is possible for a medical man (whose qualifications, from an educational point of view, compare favourably with those of our home Universities) to lay stress before his patients on the right quarter of the moon, and on the correct aspect of the ground, for the gathering of a particular drug ”

“ The benefits which arise from the association of men, for the advancement of general science, have been long felt and acknowledged. Witness, more especially, the recent establishment of the “ British Association for the advancement of Science, ” in which are enrolled the names of scientific men from all parts of Great Britain; a vast proportion of whom assembled together at their late meeting at Oxford. We may, therefore, infer, that the desire for such a combination of forces in the Medical Profession, though dormant, has existed. ”

“ The advancement of medico-legal science, to which it is proposed that the labours of the Association shall be directed, is of the highest importance. The superiority of our continental brethren over British medical men, in their knowledge of forensic medicine, has been long painfully felt by those who are emulous of their country's fame. ”

“ DISEASE HAS CERTAIN UNMISTAKABLE SIGNS,
or symptoms, and, by reason of this fact, we have been enabled to originate and perfect a system of determining with the greatest accuracy the nature of chronic diseases without seeing and personally examining our patients. In recognizing diseases without a personal examination of the patient, we claim to possess no miraculous powers. We obtain our knowledge of the patient's disease by the practical application of well-established principles of modern science to the practice of medicine. ”

“ During his professional career he was a frequent contributor of papers to medical societies and journals. He was for ten years an associate editor of the American Journal of Insanity and wrote extensively for its columns, his articles on "Phosphoric Acid" and "Chloral" being frequently quoted by medical journals and by writers on materia medica and practice. ”

“ In private and even dispensary [Pg 46] practice, where the subjects were of a better physical and moral nature, we often saw the disease subside, and health return, after less attention to administer medical aid, or to supply other wants, than was exhibited at the hospital. We are, notwithstanding, sanguine enough to anticipate useful results from our attentive study of the symptoms of the disease, in connexion with that of the post mortem examinations, and to consider ourselves as in possession of lights to guide us with more certainty than before. ”

“ He was a governor of the Queen Victoria Jubilee Convalescent Home and took a keen interest in that institution. In 1883 he received the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society for the gallant rescue of a lady from drowning at Torquay. ”

“ The Sanitarian, established in 1873, and The Popular Science Monthly, established in 1872, are the two oldest journals in English devoted to the diffusion and popularization of science. When the Sanitarian was founded there was no journal occupied with sanitary science and public health, and the attention paid to these subjects was comparatively small. The Sanitarian has witnessed and promoted one of the most important movements of the nineteenth century. There is more accomplished now for the prevention of disease than for the cure of disease. ”

“ In 1865 he became editor of the United States Medical and Surgical Journal and the next year published the Homoeopathic Guide. In 1871 he established a home for foundlings that had a successful career without state or municipal aid. ”

“ Modern writers on pathological anatomy have prosecuted with considerable zeal and ability, their researches into the nature of the diseases of the organs within the chest, but they have done but little towards elucidating the true relation, which subsists between the diseases of the several viscera, and the serous effusions which take place into their cavities; for, by limiting their views to the disease which the post mortem examination exhibited, they have overlooked those intermediate actions or states of excitement which connect the organic disease with such effusions. ”

“ The great public health requirements for the future are the conquest over acute respiratory infections, including not only affections of the lungs, but probably also measles and whooping cough, cerebro-spinal fever and poliomyelitis and their allies; and the prevention of cancer. So while thankful for the discoveries already made, and for the beneficent work already accomplished, we must hope that the rapid increase of Medical Research in England and here will in due time enable us to extend the application of preventive medicine to diseases so far uncontrollable. ”

“ The business of the physician is to keep the proportions just and harmonious; but, as no pure element exists alone, the physician must employ the qualitas in conjunction with the materia. These (to make a phrase) substantive qualities, are found in medicines or food, which, like all objects of sense, are either cold, hot, dry, or moist, and available of course in the management of a cold, hot, dry, or moist derangement of the living body.
The elements of the human body exist in the four humours, blood, bile, atrabilis and pituita ”

“ If the diagnosis in this case be well made out, hopes may be entertained of a cure, one of the two following conditions being present:
A. The patient must be susceptible of the stimulant action of the remedy: this is often not the case. We may be sure the digitalis will not produce its effect, where the pulse of the patient remains uniform and frequent after he has taken it for several days. It does not suit such persons.
B. The medicine ought to be administered in a proper manner. To be good, the leaves, even in the dried state, should be perfectly green and free from any brown spots. ”

“ Often the best type of clinical reports—those in which the observations are directed to the significant events and not to mere side lines, and in which the significant events are correctly and adequately reported—generally lack one important essential, namely, an adequate control of the natural course of the disease. ”